From Craigslist to FEI

Nailed this halt except Simon tries to fake that his foot is down and never moves it until they move off. What a good man >< but next time put weight on it!

Alright. Day Two.

Short version, Simon realized Vana wasn't all that important really and he and Sarah did really nice, consistent rides where the scoring didn't reflect how lovely they really were. Granted we didn't disagree with the scores when we read the test, but still, they should have been over 60%. To be fair, the judging from 1st-3rd level was pretty harsh for everyone so it wasn't just us.

Sarah went first this time for 1-3 and I had the ability to watch her warmup and the test itself. It was a lovely test with lots of good things and a huge leap forward from the day before. I was super proud. The score was a 58.8% though which was barely 1% more than the previous day where they had dropped out of the canter 4 times. It's a horse show.. right? But it still sucked for Sarah as she knew she'd done a good job and the scores didn't really show that effort really well. Again, the scores for 1-3rd level were harsh this day too across the board.

He's really starting to learn how to lengthen!

Warmup canter. The warmup ring was nuts.

15m right canter to lengthening in 1-3.

1-3 counter canter loop

Vana and I in 4-1 on Sunday. We were super tired and this was about 6 strides before I rider errored for doing a haunches in instead of a shoulder in, hence my chicken wing elbows. I was also trying to get him up and impulsionized so yeah. Arrmssss

Vana once again thought he might die without Simon so I was struggling with that. Warmups were a struggle too which made me feel better about the actual ride (he'd be predictable at least in his badness :P ) The 4-1 ride was first again and I won't lie, I was tired. His janky trot was hard to sit so it sapped whatever core strength I had left and as I rounded the second 10m circle I realized his impulsion was petering out, his curling was getting worse, and I tried to address that as we can to the center line for the shoulder in. My brain and body just wasn't coming together for ALL the pieces and I ended up doing a haunches out instead but at least he was not curling and got his forward back. We were rung for an error and went back for MORE TROTTING. I stayed focused through the gross pain and we finished up our trot work just in time for the walking. His walk portions were pretty good but he's decided that turn on the haunches, something we were basically super awesome at and a big point earner for us, needed some piaffe in it. Hence our turn on the haunches went a bit skewed on the right and he got bopped for that with my spur. We hit our canter off G though and managed to struggle through the rest of the canter work with impulsion and accuracy, but Vana was getting tired so curling was a thing still.

3-3 was basically a repeat of Saturday and I just elected to get onto him for his whinnying and distraction. We pulled the test off without any major disobedience, but harsh scoring again, us being tired didn't result in the score we were hoping for. 58.4% was an improvement from the day before though but still not quite good enough despite us digging deep for the points. Next time!

So basically we got out 4th level scores for our silver medal pretty easily (with lots of riding on my part to get it done) but botched what should have been our event at the 3-3 tests. I feel better about PSG honestly between doing 4-3 and 4-1 now without too much fuss but I want to grab our 3rd level scores if we can so I'm on the hunt for a show for that. Probably end of Feb/early March since I'd like to do PSG in April.

There's not a lot of picture evidence of my rides because well, everyone was everywhere since Sarah and I were showing practically at the same time. Our entourage was the bomb and since we're going to list Simon, I wanted footage of him rather than myself this time. I think hubby got a few of my rides though so I'll post those when I can.